016 089 539 1 




Foot Notes 

ON 

Kansas Pi i story 

By R. G. Elliott 



«s 




Lawrence, Kansas 
19 O 6 



I ntroductory. 

This historical brief is submitted, not with the expectation of 
turning back to its natural channel the current of Kansas history 
which has been inverted and appropriated for fertilizing of the arid 
preserves of non-resident claiments, for re-claiming the arid wastes 
of an unsuccessful promoter, flushing sewers, and other private uses, 
'till hardly a swimmin' hole is left in the natural channel for the dis- 
porting of the descendants of those who first struck the fountain 
from which gushed the waters that should be for the delectation 
of the whole people. This inverted stream has swollen to an 
overflowing tide in which orators love to disport, whenever the 
magic name of Kansas awakens in their minds a train of sparkling 
thought impatient for utterance; and sweeping with it down the 
current of time, both wreckage and historic treasures. Floating 
in its current in Kansas City in 1902, Secretary of the Navy Moody 
discovered that "It was the men, money and association of Massa- 
chusetts that set Kansas Territory on the side of freedom." And 
our governor, in a late address at St. Louis, for the delectation of 
a distinguished assemblage, taking a header into its lambent waves 
brought up a record of the "money and brains furnished by Massa- 
chusetts," credited erroneously, with the redemption of Kansas- 
with the still greater salvage, the form of a discredited and rejected 
high official that had dropped from the electric chair of state, un- 
shrived and unmourned, now transformed by its regenerative waters 
into "One of the best of Kansas governors." 

Only an Athanasijjfus could stem such an engulfing tide, flow 
ing unvexed in its deepening channel for half a century. But as in the 
court of history no statute of limitation runs, a protest will be per- 
mitted againsc the mis-statements, perversions, misconceptions and 
distorted views that form the most striking features of our Kansas 
histories; untraversed till they are accepted without thought, and 
repeated till they have become part of the public consciousness. 
To their errors are added the neglect of the formative conditions out 
of which the Kansas issue sprung, and the hidden forces that 
wrought its solution. 









2 FOOT NOTES ON KANSAS HISTORY. 

These histories, and even the floating scraps that find circu- 
lation through literature are all so harmonious in theme and method- 
ical in their misconception, as to indicate a common source of both 
inspiration and information — some Master of the Rolls — issuing 
prepared and stamped copy; verifying the dictum of Napoleon 
that "History is a fable agreed upon." 

CORRECTIONS. 

The chief postulates of all these versions of Kansas history 
will be found in the "Kansas Conflict," a book widely accepted as 
the authentic Genesis of Kansas history, in which the author 
writes himself down as the Joshua of the Conquest. They are: 

First; "The decree of the slave power had gone forth that 
Kansas should be a slave state, and that power in Church and State, 
in Synod and Congress, was Omnipotent." 

Second: "A slave state bordered Kansas on the East, con- 
taining a population sufficient in number and daring to settle several 
territories, bold, blustering and reckless, and aroused to the im- 
portance of the conflict." "There were bowie knives, pistols, shot- 
guns, rifles and cannons in the hands of the Philistines on the bor- 
der [A whole brigade in buckram] and the attempt to occupy the 
land by the ordinary method of settlement would have been futile. 
Nothing short of concerted action by the friends of freedom could 

avail." 

Third: A most searching question! "Who could be found to 
go to Kansas, with a certainty of a hostile greeting of revolvers, 
bowie knives and all the desperadoes of the border? At length, 
after great labor, a party of twenty-nine men, who were willing 
to take their lives in their hands went to Kansas in July, 1854- 
These men were regarded with as much interest as would be a 
like number of gladiators about to enter into deadly conflict with 
wild beasts, or with each other." [Was this in the land of Oz?] 

Fourth: "But their example was contagious, and, as they 
were not slaughtered on their arrival, other parties soon followed, as 
well as men without parties from all the Northern States." 

Fifth: "On or before the passage of the bill opening the 
Territory to settlement men from Missouri rushed over the line, 
marked trees, drove stakes in every direction. No claim could 
be taken by a free state man to which a pro-slavery man could not 
be found to assert a prior claim." 



FOOT NOTES ON KANSAS HISTORY. 3 

Sixth: "No sooner had definite arrangements been made for a 
permanent settlement of Lawrence than the conflict began in earnest. 
The first act in the drama was to be the ejectment of all Free State 
men on the pretense of prior claims to the land." 

AS TO THE FIRST POSTULATE. 

Kansas was never in danger of becoming a slave state by 
election, or of having slavery permanently forced upon it, other 
than a tentative and timid institution of precarious tenure, already 
existing under the protection of the constitution during the Terri- 
torial period. But foredoomed to abrupt excision at the termina- 
tion of that period by a hostile population, that by the impelling 
laws of migration were overwhelming it — a people of threaten- 
ing mien, before whose presence it would slink away without wait- 
ing for the order of dismissal. That such was the confident as- 
surance prevailing throughout the West, from whose hives poured 
out the human swarms that peopled the opening lands on the 
frontier, is shown by the fact that in that region where the destiny of 
Kansas was of more personal concern to the people, its lands claim- 
ed as the rightful expectancy of their friends and kindred — no 
effort to promote emigration was made. But spontaneous swarms 
set out immediately on its opening; some even a year in advance, 
stimulated by the passage of the organic act by the House of 
Representatives in 1853. They were not urged, but moved by 
the impetus of that manly spirit of independence of the true pioneer 
that prides in its own initiative, scorns leadership, and avoids the 
entanglements of organization; and in choice of new homes, as 
noted in the first message of Governor Reeder, who had traversed 
it as his first official service, "Dispersing over a district of more 
than 15,000 square miles." Thus they were secure in their pos- 
sessions, and avoided the spontaneous ignition that afflicted the 
compact Eastern colonies, and brought upon them the ravaging 
hordes from over the border on the pretext of extinguishing a 
dangerous conflagration. 

Had there been any doubt of final results this migration would 
have been diverted to Iowa and Nebraska, the former of which, 
with its vast area of inviting and vacate lands had been its haven be- 
fore the opening of the more attractive lands of Kansas. 

The "Decree of the Omnipotent Slave power that Kansas 
should be a slave state," is the fiction,- a morbid fancy; not in har- 
mony, but in conflict with the political records of that time. The 
Slave power was not omnipotent; it was powerful only in the 



4 FOOT NOTES ON KANSAS HISTORY. 

councils of the Nation; and thtre by the exercise of skillful political 
diplomacy, solidarity of interests, unity of purpose, harmony of 
action, directed by trained advocates who held control by virtually 
a life tenure of office, and exercised it by tipping the scales between 
the two great national parties. In its physical embodiment it was 
impotent and timid; holding its established position more by inertia 
than by vital force, in contrast with the free North expanding with 
increase of population and industrial activities. Blustering, but 
cowardly, it shrank from unfriendly contact. Demanding for its 
support rich soil and broad acres it moved timidly to new lands 
behind an advance guard of friendly non-slave holders. 

Missouri furnishes a convincing example by which to diagnose 
and demonstrate this proposition. Settled with slavery under Span- 
ish and French dominion guaranteed by treaty of purchase; isolated 
by unorganized territory on the south, west and north, and on the 
east by the wide expanse of vacant lands in Indiana and Illinois 
that engulfed the full tide of migration flowing along its zone; 
population not pressing upon its Mississippi boundry till the organ- 
ization of Iowa in 1838 gave it a more northerly outlet, enabled 
slavery unchallenged to establish its pre-emption right to an im- 
perial domain. Her contact with Kentucky and Tennessee gave 
an outlet to the cunent of Southern migration, that, seeking an 
outlet was flowing along its northerly channels, and at its outflow 
was deflected by the fordbidding frontage of later organized Ar- 
kansas, up the broad, rich and secure valleys of the Mississippi and 
Missouri to the limit of safety on the western boundry. 

This inflow of population was the controlling factor in shaping 
the destiny of the state. Coming mainly and in the order named, 
from Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia and North Carolina, bringing 
their customs and ideas of social organization, they constituted 
as veterans in i860 more than one-fourth of the entire American 
born population of Missouri. But enfolded by this indomitable 
and friendly population, slavery approached the unprotected frontier 
with stubborn hesitation. While in the state the slave population 
was ten per cent, of the whole, and in the fertile river counties, 
ommiting St. Louis and the extreme counties on the north, over 
seventeen per cent., in the northern tier bordering on Iowa the 
percentage was one and one quarter; in the second tier, five; and in 
the third, nine and two-thirds; almost an average. A protection 
on the north of sixty miles of neutral zone. On the west and south, 
as far as unprotected by the broad Missouri river, and omitting four 
counties, Jackson, Cass, Johnston and Green, where special kindly 



FOOT NOTES ON KANSAS HISTORY. 5 

conditions prevailed, forty-two counties, forming a broad band of 
one hundred miles in width, contained only three and one-half per 
cent of slaves. A human caterpiller, voracious and defenseless; 
to be spurned, not feared. However, the advocates of slavery might 
bluster, no intelligent fear could be entertained of such a timid and 
dependent institution being transplanted in an area under the 
flood-gates of a hostile population flowing in an ever increasing 
volume. 

Even in the hotly belligerant regions of the South its strength 
lay behind its entrenchments and in defensive maneuvers. The 
South was a land that decimated its inhabitants, casting out the 
free born heir to make room for the son of the bond woman. 

Henry A. Wise, one of the most sagacious of southern states- 
men, moved by the convulsions of that period, and sensitive to the 
decadence of his beloved Virginia, in an address deplored: "Our 
young men, over their cigars and toddy have been talking politics 
and the negroes have been left to themselves until we are all grown 
poor together. With all our rich endowments by nature, we have 
driven people enough from our borders to people other states now 
more populous than ourselves, state upon state of which we are 
called mother." 

The Federal census of i860 records more than 730,000 residents 
of the Northern states, the survivers of more than half century's 
migration who had abandoned their homes in the more attractive 
south land in disregard of the law of normal migration along the 
zone of nativity, to get away from the contamination of slavery:, 
the more thoughtful of them to escape with their families the 
dies irae, the undifined dread of which in timid minds veiled the 
future with portentous clouds, and troubled their dreams with 
the horrors of San Domingo, then widely flaunted as the threatening 
result of hostile agitation. 

Here was an army in its personnel, virile, independent, self- 
reliant, resourceful, of high moral purpose and stubborn convictions 
— determined as such by the reason of their self elimination — in 
numbers more than double all the. slave owners of the entire Nation, 
which was, by the census, less than 350,000 — and granting an ad- 
ditional equal number of voters — owners in expectancy — still sur- 
passing them. 

This movement — it might be termed a flight — beginning with 
the opening of the northwest by the Ordinance of '87, furnished the 
controlling pioneers of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, and with the 
migration from the contiguous state of Pennsylvania, of like 



6 FOOT NOTES ON KANSAS HISTORY. 

political ideas and kinship of origin, became the prime factors 
in moulding the institutions of those states in their enduring form 
and symmetrical propositions. 

It was the descendants of this northwestern composite, im- " 
bued with the political faith of their fathers, that through heredity 
had become an instinct — ambitious to repeat their experiments as 
state founders, bearing with them the germs of the new culture, 
reinforced by a direct emigration from the South moved by the 
repellant force of slavery, all drawn westward by land hunger, that ^ 
with stubborn tenacity held possession of Kansas and rescued her 
from the disasters of a bloody conflict that had been provoked and 
aggravated by a friendly but unnecessary and unwise intrusion by 
noble and sympathetic friends laboring under a spell of nervous 
apprehension, and raised her to the proud position she now occupies. 
Except on the western border of Missouri, stirred by the human 
passion prevalent since the days of Ahab, to seize adjoining territory 
and hold it in harmony of interests, and provoked to resentment and , 
retaliation by a threatening, hostile crusade that invited conflict byt 
the boasted magnitude of its propositions, and reprisals by the 
blundering weakness of execution, there was no effort on the part of 
the South to take possession of Kansas. The blustering and bloody! 
raids organized on the border, that swept around Lawrence as 
the center of resistence, enlisted their forces — only a moiety of_y 
whom had any interest in slavery — under the specious pretext 
of enforcement of law, and the suppression of insurrection; a 
mask rashly tossed to them by their victims that served as a 
legal indulgence for the commission of crimes prompted by the 
irresponsible life of the plainsmen. 

It required less credulity on the part of the inhabitants of 
border than the author of the "Kansas Conflict" presumes on 
the part of his readers, to justify their alarms for the safety of 
their institutions and to account for their savage barbarities in 
combat with an imaginary foe, at first looming up in frightfull 
proportion, but on first contact found to be defensless. As re- 
corded by the organizer of the cr usade, 40,000 promoted emigrants 
were to be projected on the pla ins of Kansas within two years, 
with the advance establishment of manufactures, hotels and all 
the adjuncts of civilization with a basis of $500, oood capital. The 
first of a series of invasions designed to establish a cordon of 
free states extending to the gulf. First years material results: 
A five months belated, second hand, out of date, balky saw mill; 
three sod and grass covered tents for public accomodation, with 



FOOT NOTES ON KANSAS HISTORY. 7 

a bitter conflict verging on bloodshed over the town site of Law- 
rence, provoked by lawless encroachment on the claims of prior 
settlers. As to the personnel: The five companies of Crusaders/ 
numbering some 750 in the aggregate, enlisted with strenuous 
effort, dwindled from desertion to 187 voters as credited by the 
census of the following February to the whole of New England. 
And of the brave "twenty-nine" "who took their lives in their hands" 
and broke through the serried ranks of the Philistines on the 
border," the names of only sixteen are found on the poll book ' 
of the November election — the roll call of the forces joining issue 
for the first conflict, or on the census roll of February. 

There is no evidence that the controlling element of the South, 
had any organized purpose or even expectancy of taking pos-( ' 
session of Kansas. On the contrary they had permitted without 
obstruction the passage of the bill by the House of Representatives 
in 1853 organizing the Territory under the law excluding slavery. 
Senator Douglas seeing in the measure the means of winning 
favor with the dominant South, reported it at the following session 
with the Missouri Compromise annulled, the Territory divided 
into North and South, dividing and diverting the northern mi- 
gration, thus offering the South a forlorn hope by concentrating 
on contiguous territory. This Dead Sea fruit was accepted for 
its attractive exterior; as a token of reconciliation from the North; 
a restoration as they considered it of their title to an equal share 
in the common domain. It was regarded of no geographical or \ 
commercial value to them, but debated as a legal proposition ad- \ 
justing their constitutional rights, and submitting to the ultimate 
source of power for determination, a question that was convulsing 
the Nation and which the Congress found itself unable to settle. 

That this was the view quietly acquiesced in by the South 
is shown by thoughtful editorials in leading journals that gave 
expression to Southern opinion. The New York Courier, a paper 
of Southern sympathies, recorded: "If we are to judge by the 
general silence of their journals, the people of the South take 
but little concern in the struggle going on for the control of the two 
new Territories. Having essayed to assert principles by wiping 
the compromise line of 36 degrees, 30 minutes out of existence, 
they seem indisposed to carry the contention farther." 

The Richmond Whig — than which there was no paper ac 
cepted as of higher authority in expressing the intelligent de- 
termined purposes of the South — at the time when the East was in 
convulsions over the imaginary danger of Kansas, published: "We 



8 FOOT NOTES ON KANSAS HISTORY. 

are tired of this everlasting commotion about negrodom. The 
Southern people are tired of it and they want peace and quiet 
if it can be obtained without the sacrifice of their inalienable rights. 
When the question of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise was 
presented to them by a Northern Senator they naturally took 
sides in favor of the appeal. Whether it resulted in any practical 
advantage to them or not was not so much a matter of consideration 
as was the repudiation of a principle; unfair and unrepublican. 
They only asked of their Nothern brethren to be admitted on 
equal terms with them into the territories of the United States, 
Having obtained this in reference to the territories of Kansas and 
Nebraska the South is content. As to the existence or non-exist- 
ence of slavery in those territories, it is a matter that must be de- 
cided by the natural course of events. The South has taken no 
steps to fill up those Territories with emigrants, by the aid of 
emigrant societies or to enter into any sort of scramble for the 
ascendancy there. She is content with the right of the Southern 
emigrants to remove to Kansas or Nebraska with their slaves, 
and that right she intends to maintain whether her people choose 
to go there or not. If the North gains the practical advantage 
in the end by Kansas and Nebraska coming in as free states, let 
them have it. While they gain the advantage by the free un- 
trammeled decision of the people of those Territories, the South 
will never object. Further agitation therefore by the North can 
result in no practical good. All the South asks is to be let alone; 
and why not let us have peace?" 

Like views were expressed by the Baltimore American and 
other leading Southern papers; and there seemed to be through- 
out the South a general acquiescence in the doctrine of popular 
sovereignty, as enunciated by Douglass. Even Preston S. Brooks, 
the most firy and belligerent champion of the South, in a speech 
in Congress on the Kansas question said: "We of the South would 
prefer that she be a slave state; yet we hold ourselves prepared to 
vote for her admission, even with constitution rejecting slavery, 
if that is the clearly ascertained will of a majority of her citizens." 

Mr. Davidson, of Louisiana, representing one of the largest slave- 
holding districts in the Union, said in Congress: "Where slavery is 
not profitable the people will not have it. It is not a matter of vital- 
ity whether the people of the Territories will, or will not have slavery; 
but it is all important they should be left to decide for themselves. 
Let them decide for themselves, and I, for one will never gainsay 
their decision." 



FOOT NOTES ON KANSAS HISTORY. 9 

Even Senator Brown of Mississippi, declaimed in the Senate: 
"Breakup your emigrant aid societies at the North, and all inter- 
ference from the South will cease. Then Kansas, being left perfectly 
free to regulate here domestic affairs in her own way, may assemble 
her people in convention, frame her constitution to suit herself, admit, 
or exclude slavery as she pleases, and she will be welcomed into the 
Union with open arms by every friend of free institutions from the 
Aroostook to the Rio Grande, and from the Atlantic to the far off 
Pacific." 

While this quiet acquiescence, on the part oi the South, was un- 
doubtedly of free will, it was equally without doubt that it was the 
painful consciousness of her limitations — impotent to stretch out her 
limbs except in the kindly zone of her nativity — that reconciled her 
to the irony of fate, that, offering her an equal opportunity with the 
North in the apportionment of the public domain, cast the foundations 
of two new states instead of one, into the balance against her. 

Decimated in ranks, and encumbered with human property not 
to be risked in uncertain surroundings, in a contest for the possession 
of a state, the South was a tortoise to the Northern hare, with her 
abounding, restless population, sweeping westward in an ever increas- 
ing volume in the race for empire. 

Next to her constitutional inability, the most serious impediment 
in the way of the South, hindering her expansion, was the pre-emp-/ 
tion law, made for the benefit of the poor home-seeker, confining its 
beneficiaries to 160 acres of land; hailed at the time of its passage in 
1841, as the Magna Charta of Freedom. Reinforced by the fitting 
parallel of latitude, Governor Walker's isothermal, it became the dead 
line beyond which slavery could not safely go, except in an attenuated 
form where family attachment and mutual dependence were stronger I 
bonds than legal enactments. Not a few of the 192 slaves returned I 
on the first census were of this character. An aged couple, relics of 
this class, faithful through all the stormy troubles, still cling to the 
old homestead on the bottom above Lawrence, serving, and cared for 
by the third generation of their old Kentucky master. 

As to the second and third postulates: It would be difficult now 
to disprove that such grotesque misconceptions were prevalent in New 
England at that time. It is in the domain of intellectual refinement, 
when morbid anxiety is epidemic, that savage bogies swell up in their 
most threatening proportions. But that a generation after their ex- 
posure, such gross misconceptions, not to say fabrications, should be 
recorded by first hand, as sober and fundamental facts, is a base im- 



io FOOT NOTES ON KANSAS HISTORY. 

position upon a generation sensitive with sympathetic credulity, and 
a crime against history. 

No obstruction to Northern immigration, either overland or by j ? 
river, was offered the first season, nor during the second, except for a | 
few days prior to the election of March 30, when the leaders of the 
border, troubled with the nightmare of an imaginary avalanche of 
"pauper votes," that they might not be able to overslaw, conspired 
with the owners of the boats on the Missouri, to flirt with the numer- 
ous sand bars that hindered navigation. The most aggravated case 
being that of the "Chambers," that defrauded Colonel Sam Walker, 
with a numerous company from Ohio, into disembarking at Boonville^ 
and making his way to Kansas, belated and under painful difficulties. 
Except for these efforts to delay, there was no interference till 
the stress of armed hostilities, that had been fanned into flame by the ; 7 . 
cowardly attempt to assassinate Sheriff Jones while in the exercise of I 
his official duties, and into a fierce heat by predatory bands from the 
far South, that had responded to an importunate call for help from 
the border, brought into activity all the resources of irregular warfare. 
On the contrary there was rivalry among river craft to secure pas-i 
sengers at the reduced rates effected with a representative line by the 
Aid Company — $10.00 a trip, including board, often a week's — gener- 
ous, and on the higher class, sumptuous, dispensed most generally 
with Southern hospitality. Boats conducted otherwise usually proved 
to be adventurous intruders. 

The most complete and convincing exposure of the falsity of 
these charges against the Missouri border, is of record in the Mis- 
souri Republican, the exponent of Atchison democracy — resolutions 
offered by Rev. Mr. Cheney and passed by a meeting of 150 Eastern 
emigrants, on board the "New Lucy," September 6, 1854. This was 
the second party, that with the brave "29" organized the settlement ' 
of Lawrence. The second resolution reads: "We cannot too highly 
compliment the captain and officers of the beautiful steamer, upon 
the success that has crowned their endeavors in ministering to our 
wants and necessities, and we would hereby not only confess our 
entire satisfaction, but would recommend the steamer "New Lucy" as 
being in our judgment one of the fastest and safest and most desira- 
ble boats traversing the Missouri river." 

"Third: That we shall ever hold in pleasing remembrance the 
kindness and courtesy with which we have been treated, both by the 
officers of this boat, and the citizens of Missouri with whom we have 
associated as fellow passengers. C. H. Branscombe, Chairman. 

Jerome B. Taft, Secretary." 



FOOT NOTES ON KANSAS HISTORY. u 

The "Leavenworth Herald," the first paper established in Kansas, 
published by General Easton, recently having removed from Missouri, 
afterwards the most aggressive and relentless enemy of the free state 
cause, envious of the Kansas City Enterprise, the forerunner of the 
Journal, that was pluming itself on securing the entrepot of the Emi- 
grant Aid business, evidently as a bid of welcome to secure its coveted 
share of Eastern immigration, copied these resolutions in full in its 
second issue. 

In its prospectus, in those days a controlling feature of news- 
papers, defining measures and intended policies, it announced: "The 
passage of the Nebraska bill, with its various provisions has drawn 
the attention of the whole Union toward Kansas with reference to the 
abrogation of the Missouri compromise. Opinions differ widely on 
the subject, and we find equally good men both for and against the 
bill. * * The question whether slavery shall exist, or be prohibited 
is to be decided at the ballot box, by the freemen of Kansas, and it 
would be a departure from the spirit and meaning of the bill for a news- 
paper to attempt to dictate to any faction. We shall set forth the 
issue such as it is, and treat both sides with fairness and without 

hesitation." 

In his "Introductory," published September 15, close upon the 
settlement of Lawrence, General Easton said: "We are democrats 
and will advocate and defend the well established principles of that 
democracy. * * We will also defend to the utmost of our abilities 
the constitution, the laws and the institutions of our country. [At 
that time slavery was the paramount institution.] * Subscribing 

with all our heart to the true and safe democratic doctrine, that the 
majority shall rule; that its will and decision shall be the supreme law 
of the land, we will oppose steadfastly all endeavors to counteract the 
same, and count tkose as enemies who will not submit thereto when 
constitutionally declared." 

In the second issue of his paper, reprimanding his neighbors over . 
the border, who were stirred to interference by the ferment of the : , 
threatened promoted emigration, he published: "The agitation of 
our local interests abroad, come from whatever quarter it may, whether 
from Massachusetts or Missouri, is impertinent and uncalled for. 
While we desire to maintain friendly relations with our neighbors we 
shall without hesitation withdraw ourselves from all foreign pupilage." 
"Men coming to Kansas from any part of the Union and demean- 
ing like good citizens, will be protected in the right of free speech 
and free suffrage. The emissaries of mischief, who come for the pur- 
pose of stirring up strife, and arraigning one class of our people 



12 FOOT NOTES ON KANSAS HISTORY. 

against another, of generating bad passions, and creating sectional 
parties, are unwelcome visitors. It is the purpose of the great body 
of the actual settlers of this Territory to carry out the letter and 
spirit of the Douglas bill. 

May Kansas, when she applies for admission as a state be able to 
inscribe on her escutcheon as her motto: 'Free Speech, and the 
Rule of the Majority.' " 

It is for the philosophic historian, not for the defender of an un- 
fortunate and un-American political experiment, to account for the 
transformation from this auspicious beginning, to the condition of 
affairs that set in in November, 1855, filling a year's calendar with \ ^ 
outrages and crimes, assaults and reprisals, oppressions and expul- 
sions, burnings, murders and assinations, armed invasions and brig- 
andage; sounding the whole gamut of crime, committed in behalf of 
slavery, but veiled behind the pretense of enforcement of law and the 
suppression of insurrection. 

As to the fourth postulate; that the Eastern party of 29 was the 
entering wedge that opened up the way for Northern immigration that 
had been waiting with painful hesitation, and thus made way for lib- 
erty; is the construction of an undisciplined fancy, in conflict with all^-"' 
the patent facts in the case. The rural homeseeker, with his agrarian 
instinct stirred by that influence that sets all animated nature in 
motion, sets out for new fields in the spring, with his seeds and uten- 
sils to secure choice of location, and provide support and comfort for 
his family. By such was the substantial settlement of Kansas, Ouly 
a small proportion of them arrived at their destination after mid-sum- 
mer. And as the bulk of overland immigration was of this character, / 
with 46 per cent, of the 8,600 population, of Northern birth, and half 
the remainder, as shown by the poll books, opposed to slavery, it will/ 
be easily seen that, besides "Sam Wood, Judge Wakefield, Rev. 
Ferrill, and some others," observed by the autor of the "Kansas Con- 
flict," more than 5,oo0free population had found homes in Kansas ' 
before the party of 29 had set foot upon the soil. 

The fifth prostulate has more of an apparent foundation than the 
others; but deceiving only the supesficial observer. The rush over 
the border, on the delayed opening of attractive lands was only such 
as attends every such event — much less strenuous than has occurred 
subsequently. Only 8,600 moved during the first year, and with the 
sagacity of the true pioneer following the streams in search of timber, 
the essential of primitive home-making, spread out, according to 
Governor Reeder-, over a district of more than 15,000 square miles. 



FOOT NOTES ON KANSAS HISTORY. 13 

Less than 3,000 of these being voters, and competent to pre-empt, I 
they could occupy only one-fifteenth of the diversified area over which I 
they were scattered. Certainly no crowding out. 

As to the matter of claims held for non-occupants, charged as: 
being in the interest of the pro-slavery party — the explanation was 
patent to every observer at the time. The opening occurring late in 
the spring, and the pioneers almost exclusively renters or owners of 
small farms, with provident forethought, set out after planting their 
crops, selected their claims, made the necessary beginnings to hold 
them, and leaving them in charge of neighbors, went back to take care 
of their crops, later to return with their families and effects. It was 
the faithful guardians of these poor mens' expectant homes, that are 
charged with fraudulently aiding their own worst enemy, whose bale- 
ful influence they had felt, and from which they were trying to escape. 

But the proof of the falsity of the whole statement lay before the 
author of it. In his own district, with a population of 962, embrac- 
ing all but 82 of the New England voters, and all the most desirable 
claims taken before their arrivals, there were but 80 voters of southern 
nativity, and but 43 recorded as voting for Whitfield, with conflict of 
claimants confined almost entirely to the town site of Lawrence, and 
there in an effort to dispossess prior settlers at his own insistance. .J 

As to the sixth prostulate: The settlement of Lawrence was the 
first aggressive movement in the chain of events that marked the early 
calendar of Kansas with tragedy, often of more than monthly fre- 
quency. The writer of the "Introduction" to the "Kansas Conflict' 
divides the labors of the New England Emigrant Aid Company "with- 
out which" he confidently asserts, "Kansas could not have been 
saved," into those performed by the creator of that company "which 
made it possible to save Kansas from slavery by outside work;" and 
the "inside work by which it was saved to freedom," by its Kansas 
agent. Lawrence being the center and first result of his activities,' 
every feature of its settlement assumes illustrative significance. 

To harmonize these with the preceeding postulates, the author of 
the "Kansas Conflict" has been forced to take unrestrained liberty 
with the truth s and in interpretation of the law. 

He records: "No sooner had definite arrangements been made 
for a permanent settlement of Lawrence than the conflict began in 
earnest. The first act in the drama was to be the ejectment of all ' 
free state men on a pretense of prior claims to the land. When the 
site was selected for a town, but one settler, Mr. Stearns, occupied it, 
and his improvements and claim were purchased by the agent of the 
Aid company. Another settler, A. B. Wade, was near the site on the 



14 FOOT NOTES ON KANSAS HISTORY. 

west, but he retained his claim, as it was not needed for the town. 
Soon after taking possession other claimants appeared and insisted 
that the town should vacate for them. The most belligerent of these 

% claimants was John Baldwin. They determined to remove all occu- 
pants from their claims, which covered, or would cover if heeded, 
nearly the whole territory open to settlement." 

I Following is the true statement, based on personal observa- 

tion, intimate knowledge gained as, with his partner, Judge Miller, 
intermediaries, through whom the liberal and satisfactory settlement 
of the dispute was made between the farm claimants and the Law- 
rence Association, on the verge of a bloody clash of arms, seized as 
the first quoin of vantage offered the slave party. The statement is 
also verified by reference to the records. 

The charge that Wade and Lykins, the only pro-slaver}' men on 

'the townsite of 2,000 acres, confronted by more than 100 members of 
the Association, sixteen of whom were of the daring 29 that broke 
through the armed forces on the border, and supported by only 43 of 
like persuasion in a population of 962, "proposed to eject all free 
state men from their claims, is a conception too irrational for respect- 
able fiction — stuff of which only troubled dreams are made, or a 

I wanton abuse of human credulity. 

The belligerent Baldwins, with Stearns, and others of their kin 

I were free state men from Illinois, constitutional migrants, a class 
prevalent in the West. Like many others, sniffing new lands from 
afar, catching the forward shadow of coming events cast by the intro- 
duction of the Nebraska bill, they set out for the new Territory a year 
in advance and halting on the border were able to secure choice of 

Lclaims of high value for ferry privileges by the rapids of the Kaw. 

Chapman, the most mercurial and explosive of the squatters, who 

i held a claim back from the river, by secret agreement with Jenkins, 
a free state man residing in Kansas City, was a puppet, bowing to 
whoever pulled his cord. 

. C. W. Babcock, the fifth of the farm claimants, was a native of 

Vermont. Removing to Lawrence after a short residence in St. Paul, 
he found an unoccupied claim on south Mississippi street, afterward 
pre-empted by deceptive settlement by Robinson. He became 
Reeder's census enumerator for the first district, the first postmaster, 
the first mayor of the town, the first free state president of the Terri- 
torial council, and with his partner Lykins, the first bankers, and was 
always foremost in advancing the interest of the town. 

The statement that only Stearns occupied the town site when it 
was selected, was never made during the controversy. It was of 



FOOT NOTES ON KANSAS HISTORY. 15 

public knowledge, and undisputed, that the bank of the river was| 
lined with settlers along the whole front of the town site, before the 
coming of the first Eastern company; Wade on the west bank, 
Lykins near Ohio street, Stearns on Massachusetts street and 
Baldwin near Rhode Island street. The land being unsurveyed, 
as it afterward proved, the three latter fell on the same 
fractional quarter. The harmony of the most jealous interests 
of these squatters will be explained further along. That the author 
of the "Kansas Conflict" must have known this prior possession is 
evident from the fact that the deed of Stearns to Pomeroy dated Sep- 
tember 28, 1855, recorded in book "B," page 1 of City Records, 
describes the "160 acres" sold, as bounded on the east by the "claim 
of John Baldwin." The records also show a boundary agreed upon 
between Wade and Lykins — the ravine leading to the river between 
Penn and Pinckney streets. 

But from ignoring the public land laws, Pomroy got a blank deed, 
as, on Stearns' vacating, Baldwin being next in succession could 
assert his right, and after him Lykins, so Pomroy came in only for an 
expectancy in the third degree; valueless except by purchase of both 
the other settler's rights. But priority of settlement was not the 
claim set up by the president of the company, but the precedence of 
a town site over a farm claim. 

But granting both priority and precedence, the company was in--' 
competent to pre-empt an acre of land. The law regulating the pre- 
emption of town sites limited the area to 320 acres and required a 
filing in the land office to be made by legal or incorporated officers. 
But the company had been led out into the wilderness, uninstructed, 
unorganized, beyond the immediate reach of any power to incorporate, 
then deceived by spurious interpretations of law, and as the fore" 
runners of a grand politico-moral movement that was defining its lofty 
purposes and methods, thrust into a conflict where law, equity, and 
unbiased human sympathy were against them; to the lasting impair- 
ment of the moral force of the whole movement. 

But to the claims of priority of settlement, and precedence of a-' 
town site, a third is added — holding the land as a trading post. But 
the pretense that putting a little stock of goods by a private individual, 
in a cabin bought by another from a prior settler constituted the land 
a trading post, in the meaning of the law, is child's play, worthy of 
notice only as a measure of the mental grasp of the pretender. 

But overriding all these considerations, the locating of the town • 
site was vitiated, both by its forbidden area, and by the criminal 
method proposed to secure title. By the lithographed plat made by 



16 FOOT NOTES ON KANSAS HISTORY. 

the official engineer in 1854, two copies of which are still in existence 

^.in Lawrence, the site extended east of the present town, exhausting 
the colonial states in the nomenclature of its streets, and to the west, 
beyond the limits of West Lawrence, to the exhaustion of all the Ter- 
ritories, leaving several streets unnamed; to the north one block far- 
ther than the present limits: and southward to Morris street, squaring 
out the southwest corner with the claims of Robinson, Emery, Wilder 
and Fuller. A magnificent area of 400 blocks, embracing plains, 
valleys and bluffs, bedecked with numerous parks, public grounds, 
capitol grounds, court house grounds and college grounds, 30 blocks 
in all; an ample levee to accommodate a fleet of steamboats; located 
at the head of reliable navigation; with grand avenues reaching out 
from it; one, Pinckney street to accommodate all the California busi- 
ness; the other, Massachusetts street, to tap the Santa Fe Trail and 
divert the New Mexican business from Independence. 

Though this metropolitan scheme in its detail was incubated on 
the banks of the Kaw, its conception was by the actuary of the Aid 
company, as recorded by himself, not yet having eaten of the tree of 

^knowledge, a proposition to take four sections of land, place all their 
improvements on one, and when they had accomplished the redemp- 
tion of Kansas, estimated at two years, close out their investment at 

^a profit, and repeat their colonizing operations in some slave state. 

But the scheme collapsed from the structural weakness of its 
empty magnitude; and the fragments were appropriated by those 
assigned to hold the various quarter sections, who revolted at the 
fraud and perjury that would be required of them to consummate the 
scheme. 

y The heart of the town site, however, was held firmly by the five 
farm claimants. Lykins, by his residence in Kansas City, and familiar- 
ity with the river, was aware of this position as the. most promising 
site for a town, and knowing also of the right that certain Wyandotte 
Indians had, to locate 640 acres of government land, a right not here- 

f tofore available, he arranged for a power of attorney to make his selec- 
tion with one of the parties. But on arriving at his chosen spot he 
found it in possession of Stearns and the Baldwins. But as they all 
had like hopes he easily came to a confidential arrangement with them, 

.•built a comfortable cabin, and sat down to watch his squatter claim 
till conditions should be shaped for filing his Indian claim. But the 

, coming of the Eastern company and their buying out of Sterns, com- 
plicated affairs. 

/ With the president of the Association in charge the negotiations 
with Wade were stopped; not because, as he asserts, his claim, the 



FOOT NOTES ON KANSAS HISTORY. 17 

most beautiful and commanding of all, now the heart of West Law- 
rence, was not needed for the town, for it was embraced within the 
lithographed plat of that time; but because of his proposition to take 
it without pay, by the process of surveying and platting it; a town sit' 
as he avers taking precedence of, and supplanting a farm claim — after 
the manner of the condemned ancients, making void the law by the 
incantation of "Corban." 

To the first and second Aid parties that formed the Association 
were added more than an equal number from later arrivals, that 
acquired interests in the projected town, creating an importunate de- 
mand for lumber that had been promised by the Aid company, to build 
shelters for the approaching winter — shorn lambs that were compelled 
to draw around themselves the tempered winds for comfort. 

To avoid trouble and responsibility the mill had been leased to a 
timber expert, a member of the Association, who having secured a 
monopoly of the logging forces, stirred by the exigenciesof the situa- 
tion, stripped Baldwins claim of its margin of timber, extended his » 
operations beyond to the new Stearns claim, and across, to the island. 
So energetically had he pushed the business, that, before the mill, 
stubbornly hesitating to take precedence of the approaching winter 
solstice, had sawed a board, he had delivered on the yard and scaled 
over seventy orders; and with the thriftiness that his generation prides 
in, obtained advance payment, with a comfortable rise in the previ-/ 
ously published price. 

This master stroke of business, which seemed to the untutored 
squatter, who regarded their timber with Druidical veneration, exas- 
perating robbery, was afterward validated, or at least a dispensation'' 
issued by a Federal judge. The mercurial farm claimant in resenting; 
intrusion on his premises came in collision with the surveyors staking! 
the town site, and was hauled before the court at the seat of govern-/ 
ment, forty miles distant, by a constable and prosecutor. On plead- 
ing defense against trespass he was informed by Judge Lecompte that 
with inchoate title and unsurveyed land, such a plea would not 
avail, and he was placed under bond not to molest the surveyors — In 
the abstract justice — in its application, a condonement of plundering. 

A column disquisition on this opinion by the learned attorney of " 
the Association, published in the newly established papers, nerved a 
combination of the members to the courage of their longings, and the y 
proceeded to apportion among themselves, in ten acre lots, the timber " 
on the first well timbered claim north of the town site, held by a 
Kentuckian named Wilson. The spoliation had not proceeded far, 
when Wilson, unrestrained by judicial opinion, administered a sound' 



i8 FOOT NOTES ON KANSAS HISTORY. 

thrashing with his fists to the leader, one of those selected to hold 
down the surplusage of the town site, and a larger man than himself. 
For this he was hauled up, a lone culprit with a wagon load of 
witnesses before the two justices in Lawrence and one summoned 
from the country, sitting en banc for this grave occasion, and charged 
with assault with intent to kill. The visible evidence relied upon to 
convict, was the lacerated little finger of the complainants right hand, 
that by a misdirected blow had got fast between Wilson's teeth. But 
though carried in a sling and unfolded with painful symptoms before 
the court it failed to convince the bench that either fists or teeth, 
though wielded by a Kentuckian, were deadly weapons. This triumph 
of natural justice and squatter law over a remorseless combination 
stopped all further attempts at spoliation. 

By the close of the year the controversy over the town site, be- 
tween the stubborn farm claimants and the uncompromising Associa- 
tion, was verging on a bloody riot. The long delay in starting the 
saw mill had held back all improvements, and the flimsy structures of 
the Aid company, that, boasting of its vast resources, excited ridicule, 
were taken as evidence of a tentative occupancy. But with the first 
motion of the mill boards were carried away impatiently by the arm 
load for instant use, and the rush of building operations gave conspic- 
uous evidence of a determined and permanent occupation by the in- 
truders, that, with the boasted inflow of population in the spring, 
^threatened a deluge that would swallow up all opposition. 

Without law for protection or courts for redress, the claimants 
were thrown back upon their natural resources. Their condition was 
such as was liable to be forced upon any squatter, by a contestant set- 
tling upon and appropriating his claim; depriving him of its use, and 
starving him into abandonment, until surveys and courts at some in- 
definite time should settle title. Their only arbiter was public opinion 
whose judgment in an extremity would be enforced by the impulse of 
the time and measured by the aggravation of the case. 

Such a court met January n, in the public tent, one of the char- 
acteristic constructions of the Aid company, called to "protest against 
the tyranical encroachments by the Lawrence Association." It was 
an overflowing meeting made up of the surrounding settlers turning 
out in mass, and was presided over by Judge Wakefield, who had 
received the vote of the free state party for delegate to Congress. 
Prominent among its officers, and on its committees were men of un- 
impeachable honor and integrity, as William Yates, still living, the 
Adams's, Garvins, McFarlands and others of like standing^, all com- 
ing together with an air of earnest purpose and settled determination. 



FOOT NOTES ON KANSAS HISTORY. 19 

Among them a lively element of pugnacious inclination were held in 
restraint, more by the absence of contradiction than by the proprieties 
of the occasion. That the pro-slavery party was theie in force, was 
inevitable — not unwelcome, as it was a non-partizan assemblage; 
coming from afar, as green flies drawn by tainted matter — the subject 
of indignation offering a promising culture for spreading their infec- 
tion, and by which they profited by the wide dessemination of their 
virus. But though gathering from a wider area, they were in a de- 
cided minority, conspicuous, more by bluster and bitterness of denun- 
ciation than by numbers. 

The most conspicuous feature of the proceedings was a long set ,- 
of resolutions, grotesquely ridiculous in expression — a hash of picked 
up broken fragments of lofty thoughts, pompous utterances, ungeared 
sentences, disrupted phrases, and incongruous metaphors, presented 
by the mercurial claimant, and accentuated by heroic declamation, 
that classed him as a high grade unconcious buffoon. The grave ' 
assembly, trusting more for effect to the pressure of volume and grav- 
ity than the rhetorical expression, accepted them as over-ripe eggs, 
impossible of amendment, yet discourteous to decline, and in defer- 
ence to their inflated author projected them at the Association. 

These bombastic resolutions are quoted at length in the "Kansas 
Conflict" in derision, as a measure of the capacity of the assemblage, 
in contrast with a set of model resolutions passed five days later by a 
meeting of citizens, as is averred "not members of the Association," 
denouncing the proceedings of the assembly, defending the Associa- 
tion, and lauding the Aid company — a reversal of the former judg- 
ment by a higher court. An examination of the records shows that/ 
the resolutions were presented by the Attorney of the Association 
and all but four of those participating were members, and those four J 
beneficiaries of the Aid company. 

The author's conclusive statement that "resolutions and counter- 
resolutions availed nothing except to place the parties on record" is 
contradicted by the recorded results. The indignant condemnation ^ 
of their course by so large an assemblage of disinterested citizens 
awakened the impressible members of the Association to a realiza-' 
tion of the untenable and lawless situation into which they had been, 
led. A distribution of the public land laws, with which they were 
unacquainted, and which had been misinterpreted to them, opened 
new views of their situation; and most fortunately at this juncture, j 
the obstinate president of the Association was called back to Boston, 
for a lengthened period, enabling them to release themselves from the 
entanglement of a fatuous leadership. 



20 FOOT NOTES ON KANSAS HISTORY. 

Pomroy, who was financial agent of the Aid company at Kansas 
City, coming to Lawrence to look after its affairs, saw things in the 
sun- light of law, and of both business and political policy; and as 
owner of record, of the shadow of the Stearns claim, took the man- 
agement of the interests of the Association, effected a compromise 
with the farm claimants, exchanging population for land, neither of 
which, except in conjunction with the other, is of any value in town 
building. By his unctious diplomacy, for which he afterward became 
famous, in contrast with the previous aggressive methods, he won for 
the Association and the Aid company more than they could have 
obtained by uncontested pre-emption, under the most favorable con- 
ditions. Three hundred and twenty acres being the extreme limit by 
"pre-emption, they obtained 120 shares out of 220 of a 640 acre tract, 
with a recognition of the transfers they had made; and instead of 
years of waiting on the uncertainties of the land department, a short 
cut to title, provided by the farm claimants, by way of Indian treaty. 

This settlement of a portentous conflict was the cause of deep 
satisfaction to all concerned. Yet the author of the "Kansas Con- 
flict" records: "Why it was made has never appeared. These town- 
.-site jumpers had no more legal or equitable title to this one hundred 
shares than Franklin Pierce or Jeff Davis." Whether this statement, 
in view of the fact that every phase of the controversy for months had 
been publicly exposed to critical observation, and settled by unani- 
mous conclusion, is the result of mendacity, or stubbornness of com- 
prehension, can be decided best by a study of the life history of the 
subject. 

But tribulations were not all passed. To carry out the details of 
the settlement it was necessary to obtain a relinquishment of all the 
"occupants within the proposed area. To accomplish this, with all the 
details of distribution, drawing and recording, two trustees were ap- 
pointed by each party, and a fifth jointly. No sooner had the quit 
claims been signed, thus vacating all claims, then the fifth trustee, S. 
| N. Wood, afterward famous in Kansas affairs, obtained the deeds 
- from the Register, E. D. Ladd, on pretence of more carefull exami* 
nation; but refused to return them when called for. A like refusal wa s 
made to the demand of the other trustees. An indignant meeting 
of those interested was convened. Wood, summoned before it, con- 
tumaciously refusing to return the papers, asserting that as there was 
no law to apply in the case, he had as much authority to hold them, 
as the other trustees, and that they were beyond their reach, was at 
once removed as trustee, and Rev. S. S. Snyder appointed in his stead. 



FOOT NOTES ON KANSAS HISTORY. 21 

It now became evident that this was a bold stroke to accomplish, 
the purpose of a combination of some ninety malcontents who were 
entitled to no share in the town site, and sought by spreading out' 
over the whole area to seize possession, while the title was held in 
suspense, throw the whole matter into chaos, and profit by the 
wreckage. 

This act of treacherous perfidy with insolent defiance aroused a, 
tempest of wrath that threatened a primitive judgment on the culprit. ' 
It was a Massachusetts member of the Association, that, with a long • 
tirade of denunciation, moved to hang him; and a ministerial member . 
from Vermont, that seconded the motion with a speech of moral jus- 
tification, with the qualification — till the papers be surrendered; a 
qualification, that from the known contumacy of the culprit, would 
not qualify. So general was the consent that even the twelfth jury- 
man that so often interposes in the last extremity to save the culprit 
seemed to be going with the panel. But in his stead one of the in- 
termediaries who realized that the extreme sentence would aggravate 
rather than relieve the situation, plead for commutation to personal 
restraint by a committee till satisfaction should be given, and pre- 
vailed. The intervener was made head jailor, and with an ample staff, 
of volunteer assistants, in the upper hall of the new Aid building,, 
where Vic Johnson's grocery now stands, held vigil over the con-> 
demned culprit, on th ; result o r which hung the fate of the title deeds • 
of Lawrence, who paced the floor with restless movements and defiant , 
glare, watching for a chance to escape or communicate with the out- 
side. Towards morning the culprit's wife and two other ladies, ac- 
companied with an escort appeared with the abstracted papers. As 
they were found whole except for the erasure ol the name of the per- 
fidious trustee, he was released. 

Nor did this auto da fe entirely prevent heretical plots to disrupt 
settlement of title. One morning while the tedious work of arrang- 
ing for drawing and distribution of lots was progressing, the frame of 
a building, much larger than any dwelling in the town, suddenly 
loomed up on Mount Oread, with piles of lumber around it, and 
workmen pushing it forward. Mr. Babcock, within the bounds *of" 
whose claim it was, with others of the farm claimants, and an axe, 
set out to investigate, and finding no satisfactory reason for the intrus- 
ion, laid to with his axe and cut away the corner of the building. At 
this juncture S. N. Wood, of sinister import, with Deitzler and the 
contractor, not thrice armed, only doubly, with a brace of revolvers, 
rushed up the hill and called a halt. A parley revealed the significant 
fact that the house was being rushed up for the reception of the agent 



22 FOOT NOTES ON KANSAS HISTORY. 

of the Aid company, who was returning with his family and house- 
hold goods. A truce was made till the agent should arrive and make 
satisfactory arrangement. On his arrival, summoned before a called 
meeting of the Association, he disavowed any purpose of interfering 
, with the settlement of title and pledged himself, when the lots should 
be drawn to purchase the ground at an appraised value. On this con- 
dition the house was permitted to be completed. 

He built better than he knew. Around it flowed the tide that 
swept him on to easy fortune. The story-and-a-half structure, built 
of green cottonwood, with its contents burned to ashes the following 
year by Sheriff Jones' posse, valued by a method of mutual appraise- 
, ment, brought $23,953 in certificates issued by a legislative claim 
commission, that were honored by Governor Medary and Treasurer 
Mitchell, with equal amount of Territorial bonds; at what official 
commission, the missing treasurer's report of that year, fails to reveal. 
In addition, the building formed the foundation for the claim that 
won the title of the University grounds. 

This incident was the closing attempt openly to disturb the 
settlement. 

The formal relinquishment of the settlers' claims was made April 
3, 1855, taking effect with the locating of the Indian right, constitut- 
ing the town site in the terms of the law, an Indian Reserve. Sub- 
sequent disturbances were on petition, pushing the margins on the 
three land sides to sub-division lines, in conflict with the previous 
uniform rule of the land department, giving the lines of prior Indian 
Reserves precedence to those of the general survey. The first seri- 
.. ous contest was by General Lane, who held a fractional claim on the 
west, and had already profited by the adjustment of the limits. He 
won a forty acre sub division, with valuable improvements upon it, 
squaring out his quarter section; in the opinion of those conversant 
•with the matter, more by senatorial pressure and lack of defense, 
than by law or equity. He established a precedent that all those in 
contact profited by, most notably the author of the "Kansas Conflict," 
whose case furnished a rebuttal to his assertion that a part of a town 
site could not be pre-empted by a farm claimant. 

These minute details concerning the settlement of Lawrence, 
otherwise of no value worth recording or even calling back to mem- 
ory, except as incidents of pioneer experience, receive significance 
from their relation to a conflict that convulsed the Nation; and as the 
beginnings of the town that became the vortex of the tempest; many 
of them like motes in the eye, commanding attention by their irritat- 
ing minuteness. But above all they challenge examination an as 



FOOT NOTES ON KANSAS HISTORY. 23 

object lesson illustrating the manner in which were expended the ex- 
ultant energies of a pretentious, though patriotic organization designed 
to shape the destiny ofa State. 

The version of these events, — perversion is a more accurate term, 
given in the "Kansas Conflict" challenges attention by its wide accept- 
ance as of supreme authority; from the official prominence of its 
author andihis relation to the events; and by its evident purpose to 
mend the damaged reputation of its author, and lift him to a tottering 
pinnacle of fame, — which it has done. These multiplex considerations 
justify the minute traversing of his statements made with such bold 
assurance, as they form the clay feet, though unskillfully fashioned, 
upon which stands the gold crowned image of his vision. 



24 FOOT NOTES ON KANSAS HISTORY. 

The main body of the address herewith presented is a stricture made 
on the leading addresses delivered at the Semi-centennial celebration of Law- 
rence, prepared shortly after that event for publication in the Journal. But 
the editor, Col. Learnard, from his official relation with the orators, feeling 
that the publication at that time would be a violation of the amenities ,de- 
elined it, but suggested that it be held over, to become more mellow with age 
and offered to the '56ers, where freedom of expression on historical matters 
is net only tolerated, but encouraged. The request was cheerfully acquiesed 
in, and it is here submitted, but rather ehiistalized than mellowed— maybe 
acidulated by ago. 

A SKETCH OF KANSAS HISTORY. 

An Address Before the Society of '56ers. 
BY R. G. ELLIOTT. 

As the echoes of the Panathenaic carnival have died away, so that a 
note of dissent will not inject a discord into the diapason, it will not be inap- 
propriate to offer some strictures on the celebration of the event; not on the 
program, which, by the acclaim of the multitudes who witnessed and partic- 
ipated, was most beautiful, impressive and satisfying in all its material fea- 
tures, instructive, elevating and inspiring in its intellectual exercises and 
harmonious in its execution. But only on what is best denoted as the over- 
tone of the prime numbers of the memorial add 1 esses. 

Grandly two gifted orators careered through the bright empyrean, shed- 
ding from their plumes glittering gems of thought and brilliant flowers of 
rhetoric, but blinded with excess of light that shone upon them from the 
East; as they swept through their lower reaches they floundered among facts 
and passing over the arena of the conflict that lay beneath them as they 
glanced through the gallery of named and unnamed heroes, their mental 
orbs with dim suffusion veiled, recognized only the forms of a brace of pre- 
tenders who, having thrust themselves before the camera of history, loomed 
up in the foreground of its pages in heroic size; and failed to grasp the true 
nature and conditions of the conflict they were so eloquently celebrating. 

The conflict in behalf of freedom was not a crusade projected and or- 
ganized in the East inspired with the ''Puritan idea," nor were the forces 
resisting the machinations of the slave power wielded by personal direction. 
Such a movement was inaugurated by the overflowing political philanthropy 
of the East, with boastful publicity and extravagant propositions, but with 
disappointing results. Unproved ordnance of misdirected and uncertain 
range, it accomplished more by the thunder of its discharges than by the 
execution of its projectiles. Its reverberations, as proclaimed by its actuary, 
echoing from the "Schuylkill to the Penobscot and from the Atlantic to the 
St. Lawrence, " repeating the call to the conflict, though richly productive in 
nervous apprehension and sympathy for the threatened cause of freedom, 
were diappointing in practical results; the recruits responding to the call 
and sent to the front from New England forming only a diminishing 6 per 
cent of the population of the contested territory in the first year of the con- 
flict, shrinking to 4 per cent at the close, as shown by the census of popu- 
lation of the respective years. 

Only an insignificant 200 more than from Iowa, the least popu- 
lous of the tributary states, that rolled in quietly by a flank movement, un- 
trumpeted and unsung, their movements heralded only by the faint rumb- 
ling of their covered wagons over the grassy plains; and careless of fame 
blended their personality with the composite forces of freedom; and sat- 
isfied with their undivided share of the common glory so freely accorded, of 



FOOT NOTES ON KANSAS HISTORY. 25 

accomplished results, leave their distinctive records unwritten, their Legends 
untold, their muster roll fragmentary and uncared for— a cryptogram in 
a neglected volume of the federal census returns. 

Kansas was not won to freedom by armed conflict foughl by knightly\ 
crusaders, but held through patient endurance and sacrifice, by an army of 
stubborn occupation. Nor were the brutal forces of the slave power "baf- 
fled, thwarted or circumvented"— as phrased by the self-asserted leader of 
the free slate forces— by any political strategy; but on the eve of threat- 
ened annihilation of the active contingent of the party, suppressed, by the 
timely arrival of Governs r Geary, supported by a squadron of dragoons and 
a battery of artillery. 

The armed conflicts, id' which there were many, all of happy results to 
the cause of freedom and fruitful in diversity of ]> 
sonal heroism, that won the royal signet to the title 
deed of true nobility for the founders of the state, were desultory 
and fragmentory, and though accomplishing- their immediate purpose, 
they furnished argument for the calumnious charge of insurrection, and" 
for inflammatory appeals by the territorial officials addressed to the vicii us 
element across the border; appeals that were eagerly responded to by ' 
organized hordes mustered for the extermination of the \'va' state party, 
and that marked the course of their invasion with indiscriminate ravage 
and bloodshed. 

Except the saving remnant enlisted in New England as the special 
bodyguard of liberty, the forces that achieved the freedom of Kansas were 
not soldiers by first intention, nor champions of any political theory, but j 
homeseekers of the humbler class, stirred by that dominant feature of the) 
Aryan race— the instinct of migration, coming mainly from Ohio and the 
states westward — vast propagating; grounds fcr the populating of the West, 
that in the decade embracing the conflict was annually recruiting an army of 
70.000 moving westward by states; and by the same instinct following the 
zone of their nativity. These were largely reinforced by swarms of exiles j 
from the South, who had abandoned their native zone to escape the dorn-j 
ineering contamination of slavery. Missouri, slave state as she was, with 
her border held in chancery by the slave propoganda, furnished a larger"' 
quota to the free state ranks than New England. Indeed, a comparison 1 f 
the poll books with the census shows that the greater part of the immigra- 
tion to Kansas from the slave states came to get away from slavery. 

It was the combination of these forces that withstood the assaults of 
the slave power and won the victory for freedom. An army that recognized 
no commander, impelled by a dominating impulse, held together by the pres- 
sure of crushing events, enlisting recruits by the pathos of their tribulations, 
gaining strength from antagonism, courage from defeat and strength of pur- 
pose from disaster, ever catching rays of hope as they gleamed through the 
clouds that overshadowed them; ever impelled by the American idea dom- 
inant within them, now excited to aggressive vitality by fierce conflict, 
reaching its highest development in overcoming obstacles. 

Throughout its whole course, except in local conflicts, it was an army 
without leaders, guided by its own instincts and moving by the force of its 
own impulse. Its chiefs were its servants, the expression of its purposes 
and the executors of its will; all changeable as the conditions that sur- 
rounded it as the rushing course of events or the moods of its masses dic- 
tated. 

Though "Arma Virumque," so elegantly introduced by one of the ora- 
tors, Gunsaulus, forms the central theme around which our histories have 



26 FOOT NOTES ON KANSAS HISTORY. 

ibeen constructed, the true epic of Kansas is not an Aeneid, but rather an 
i Odyssey; the story of a people accomplishing a great purpose through 
many "expedients," beset with multiplying dangers and"trdifficul- 
/ ties, not the least of which springing from the inconsiderate rash- 
ness of its assumed leaders, brought its active contingent to the 
verge of extermination. The '^arjns" (taken in the primitive 
sense of the term), more provocatie* of violence and attack than ef- 
fective for protection. The "Man" a marplot; his first footstep upon the 
^ite of Lawrence a lawless attempt to crush out prior settlers' claims— to the 
pioneer the dearest of all his possessions— persisted in with contumacious 
stubborn.*] ess, even when abandoned by the members of his own association, 
awakening a bitter feud that, forming on political lines, defamed the party 
i of freedom, brought the whole movement of which he was agent into eon- 
Uemptuous disrepute and furnished the slave party a much needed issue that 
they eagerly seized and used with telling effect. 

His next step a plot by armed and organized force to resist the execu- 
tion of the territorial laws, replied to by an overwhelming invasion that 
threatened the destruction of Lawrence, and supplemented by a train of 
outrages— the destruction of the free state presses in Leavenworth and 
Lawrence, the indictment and burning of the free state hotel, unchaining 
the dogs of war, open murder and midnight assassination, widespread 
brigandage, and for the defenseless people, descensus averno. 

Thirty years after, reviewing this condition of affairs and claiming for 
himself the management of the cause of freedom, "baffling, thwarting and 
circumventing" the enemy, with sardonic complacency he records (page 243 
Kansas Conflict) : 

"It was immaterial how many printing presses, hotels and bridges were 
indicted and destroyed, or how many men should be killed in the operaion, 
so that the responsibility could be placed on the federal authority," and 
"the more outrages the people get the government to perpetrate upon them 
the more victories they would gain." A "Man" or Mephistopheles? 

His next step was a conspiracy to set in operation, in conflict with the 
territorial, a state government, organized as a petitionary and harmonious 
movement, the control of which he had obtained by shrewd diplomacy, 
thrusting himself, a repellant candidate, upon the nominating convention, 
jeopardizing the whole movement by a diminished vote. The pretense of a 
state government was to be supported in the exercise of its functions by the 
militia, reinforced by armed allies raised by the aid or connivance of certain 
sympathizing state governments, and held up while it knocked out, as he 
expressed it, as recorded in Reader's Diary, "the d d territorial gov- 
ernment." But the plot failed, happily before an overt attempt at execu- 
tion. He was arrested on the Missouri river on his way East, for "anna 
virumque, " brought back and indicted for treason. 

Here under the safeguard of the sympathetic, Major Sedgwick and com- 
pany of dragoons, his harp upon the willows, in four months of pensive 
silence, broken officially only twice, he rendered his supreme and only serv- 
ice to Kansas in the days of her adversity, posing as a martyr of liberty, 
an objective of the despotic rule of the slave power— the golden text of the 
Fremont campaign. 

His first advisory message issued ere the tremors of his arrest had hard- 
ened into stoic indifference was to he citizens of Lawrence, where all of his 
posessions lay, to offer no resistance to Sheriff Jones and his posse, who 
were marching upon the town for the desh-uction of the hotel and the 
printing offices. 



FOOT NOTES ON KANSAS HISTORY. 27 

His scion. 1 and last, a joint missive to the Topeka legislature, smug- 
gled out from his confinement, advising its members, in contempt of the 
orders of Colonel Sumner served upon them to disperse, to stand up before 
his shotted cannon trained upon their halls and add another spot — spirit 
stirring, it would have been — to the "blood-stained banner." 
"Pity thee- So I do! 

I pity the dumb victim at the altar; 
But does the robed priest for his pity falter?" 
This missive prepared by him he places with his own hands as a ehap- 
let on his brow. 

Reeder had gone into hiding in Kansas City and the whole staff of state 
officers with two minor exceptions forsook him and fled, and as self-exiles 
found more congenial employment and effected more service in their native 
states pleading the cause of "bleeding Kansas" in the Fremont campaign. 
Only Reeder. one of the three conspirators, on his escape from con- 
cealment, sounded the war cry in Chicago and Bloonrington, 111, calling for 
men, arms and money to be sent to Kansas, the army to be supported for a 
year. He was quickly called down by the Republican national committee 
and thenceforth his martial airs were sung low to a minor key. 

When at the incoming of the Walker administration the conflict was 
transferred from the arena of brute force to the domain of political strategy 
and the destiny of Kansas placed upon the political chessboard ; it was these 
combined forces that had patiently withstood the brutal onslaughts of the 
slave power that, gaining an insight into the schemes of their adversaries, 
responded with sagacity to every move, and won a checkmate against the 
combined skill of the past masters of this profound game, though supported 
by all the sinister forces under the control of a determined and unscrupulous 
administration. 

Victory was not won under the direction of any master mind. The 
players were a composite of the chosen representatives of, and in electric 
contact with an indignant people treacherously brought to bay, surcharged 
with destructive voltage, 

The exultations of triumph over the victory at the polls in October,'' 
1857, were suddenly changed to notes of alarm as the meshes of a sinister 
power, intangible and irresistible, were seen to be closing around the vic- 
tors, granting them neither the bracing thrill of open conflict, nor the eon- 
soling honor of martyrdom in defeat, dragging them in sardonic triumph 
into ignoble servitude. 

The contest was no longer over economic conditio 11s or social organiza- ' 
tion, but over an idea, the most effective force in the elevation of the human 
race, mild in its action when given free course, but volcanic in its expression 
when harshly curbed; an idea enrobed in a sentiment made sacred by sac- 
rifice and suffering, fierce conflict and the blood of martyrdom, and by 
patient endurance. 

Slavery as an institution in Kansas was dead, crushed by the misdirect- 
ed, maniac blows of its own defenders; entombed under a stone that only 
an angel could roll away, but would not; its resurrection guarded against by 
jealous legions more faithful than Roman soldiery. The implacable hostility 
of the victors, aggravated by the outrages perpetrated in its behalf, made its 
material restoration impossible, even by the combined forces of statute, con- 
stitution and supreme court judgment. Only a fetid odor remained as a 
reminder of its fitful and precarious existence, and its uneasy ghost flitting 
over the battlefield, disquieting the timid— the poi'tent of a great disaster- 
Governor Walker, in a plaintive agony of patriotic grief, expressed to Secre- 



28 FOOT NOTES ON" KANSAS HISTORY. 

tary Marcy, deplored the admission of "an abolition state into the union" 
— an act that would be taken as an unpardonable offense by the recalcitrant 
fire-eaters of the South, and would drive them to a dissolution of the union. 
A prediction based upon his intimate knowledge of their maturing pur- 
poses and verified three years later by the great rebellion. 

"Rest perturbed spirit," was the incantation of the victors— more a 
command than a prayer. But the mourners, assembled in conclave at Le- 
compton projected a monument, inscribed, ' ' Sacred to the Memory of His 
Mightiness"— a constitution written upon its cerements, guaranteeing to 
the corpse for ten years a Barmacide lease of life, designed to crown the 
admission of the state into the union. 

It was this offensive embodiment, doubly noisome from the mephitic 
odors of its Lecompton embalmment, that Buchanan, with the haughty arro- 
gance of a Coriolanus, in an advance congressional message transmitted 
by special courier, flung before the people of Kansas for their enforced ac- 
ceptance of statehood. 

A crown of thorns more galling than fetters ! a cordial with poison of 
a serpent ! a buffet more humiliating than a blow ! a freedom more debasing 
than servitude! the bitterest dregs from a cup of gall poured out to them! 
expressed the wild emotions stirred by this crowning act of presidential per- 
fidy. 

Morbid they may have been, but the more desperate and uncontrollable. 
It is among the tombs of noblest purposes that emotions become mania. 

A working majority in the house of representatives, a superfluous ma- 
jority in the senate, with an imperious power in control, left little hope for 
the defeat of the machination. Gloom pervaded. But the proposition was 
met with a shout of defiant indignation that sent a thrill throughout the 
land. The storm of indignation that swept over the land on the reconvening 
of the Lecompton convention to complete its machinations, safe only under 
the guns of Major Shermans battery, overawing with tumultuous multi- 
tudes and paralyzing the members with a three days' terror, on the consum- 
mation of the plot became a frenzy; boisterous demonstrations on every 
hand; tumultuous gatherings on the street corners; graver assemblages 
harrangued by flaming orators that sprang as fireflys out of the gloom; 
fierce imprecations and muttered threats flashing up even by friendly fric- 
tion at every chance meeting of citizens; among the more sober countrymen 
excited meetings at every schoolhouse, gave vent to a fury of indignation 
that presaged, if not controlled, alarming results. 

Through all demonstrations glared a determined purpose of resistance. 
By the boisterous and irresposible element expressed in terms of a Danite 
organization, with a hint of destroying angels hovering around Lecompton 
conspirators. The combative impulse flashing up from the smoldering em- ) 
bers of '56 burst into threats of armed resistance, with a movement for the 
reformation of the military force that under Gen. Lane had organized the 
late victory at the polls— a movement that later was given the sanction of 
law at the called session of the legislature- supplanting the unpliant gov- 
ernor as commander in chief by a sympathetic military board, becomino & ef- 
fective by passage over the veto. Though invalid from conflict with the 
organic act, it served its purpose, accomplishing more by its grim visage 
striking terror, than by arms. 

Beneath all these convulsive movements, in secret conference, grave sen- 
iors in counsel, leadeis in action and representatives of high character and 
commanding influence banded together under the most solemn obligations 
tocleteat the Lecompton conspiracy, even in the last resort to "unman" it. 



FOOT NOTES ON KANSAS HISTORY. 29 

In dose communication and under control was John Brown with his trust-' 
ed lieutenants keeping vigil upon the conspirators. The supreme obligation 
they were relieved from before maturity by the sudden flight of the head 
conspirator, Calhoun, and his lieutenant. McLean. Jack Henderson chief! 
actuary, captured alter a day's wild chase and saved from summary ex- 
piation by the gallantry of Colonel Walker, made atonement by auricular 
confession and a full exposure of the conspiracy. 

Among- the diversity of expedients proposed and most urgently 
pressed was the convening of the newly elected legislature to devise some 
legal method of defeat. 

The final act of the conspiracy — its fallacious submission to a popular 
vote — had been set for a date in advance of the regular meeting of the legis- 
lature, to avoid hostile action by that body. The decrees of the convention 
were final and could not be annulled. . For imperative action in the case the 
legislature was incompetent. It could only supervise, petition and expose. 

But an unwilling governor stood in the way. The odious constitution 
was the embodiment of the very puipose for which Walker had accepted 
with condescension and sacrifice his mission to Kansas, and was shaped in 
its essential features by the powers above him, and for the adoption of 
which he had labored incessantly. Only in the matter of its submission 
to a fair vote of the people, his pledge was juggled with. A pledge in 
which he had been supported by Buchanan, made in the confident expecta- 
tion that with his great political abilities, he would build up a party in 
Kansas that would adopt it. But his hesitating rejection under ominous 
pressure, of fraudulent elections, left his party in abject decrepitude, in- 
vigorated only by the power that emanated from Washington. A wounded 
serpent with only its poisonous fangs and power to strike. 

Now, from a sense of political consistency, the insufficiency of the 
legislature and fealty to his great purpose, he withstood the urgent pies- 
sure of the petitioners. But, stung by reproof for his rejection of the 
fraudulent election returns, and the perfidy of Buchanan in violating his 
pledge for the submission of the constitution to a fair vote, he hastened 
to Washington to bring his personality to bear upon him, as the only source 
from which relief could come. But in vain. He f und him bound and in 
the hands of the chief conspirators. Humbled and in despair, ashamed 
to meet the people of Kansas whom he felt he had unwittingly betrayed, 
he threw up his commission. , 

Stanton, under like conditions, plied with every influence that could 
be brought to bear, after weeks of hesitation, with the doom of dismissal 
hanging over him, offered himself as a sacrifice' and convened the legisla- 
ture. 

Now came the more intricate moves in the game. A drastic law for 
the prevention and punishment of election frauds, with jurisdiction of pro- 
bate court, illegal in this feature, but effective. A militia law adapted to 
the peculiar exigencies of the situation ; a law submitting the constitution 
to a fair vote; a commission to investigate election frauds, and correct the 
returns, with compulsory powers. 

It was the swift, vigorous and relentless execution of these enactments 
in a race with Buchanan, striving to jam the Lecompton constitution 
through congress that won the victory. The resultant, a bomb, the finding 
of the committee charged with the investigation of election frauds, that 
dispatched to Washington by General Ewing, and expoded in the capitol, 
defeated the conspiracy, disrupted the Democratic party and drove into 



3 o FOOT NOTES ON KANSAS HISTORY. 

retirement and ultimately to destruction, the malignant power that had 
fastened itself on the vitals of the nation. 

Interspersed on the calendar were two meetings of the Topeka state 
legislature, two conventions at Topeka, a two-ply one at Grasshopper 
Falls, two sessions of the territorial legislature, six elections, two grand 
demonstrations at Lecompton, one of indignation against the convention, 
the other of exultation on the convening of the legislature. Notable among 
them two December conventions at Lawrence, live volcanoes of indignation 
and defiance. Twelve months exercise of practical politics, a year of 
material prosperity, bouyant hopes alternating with harrassing fears and 
intense political activity; supremely happy in accomplished results; lib- 
erty enthroned in her richest robes, and crowned with her brightest jewel. 

This grand transformation, with its beneficent results was but the 
perfect development of the American idea of orderly self-government ; an 
idea nurtured by the generations till it has become an instinct; now 
vitalized by the conditions of its new environment, and forced into ma- 
turity in the hot-bed of conflict. 

The unfolding of a state, that later stepped into the Union in her 
supreme crisis, with the bounding energy of youth, the practical wisdom 
of maturity, a commanding prsence, and an illuminating glow of exulting 
patriotism, that gave cheer to the whole nation in the depth of her per- 
plexity. 

The Hebrew shepherd with a stone in his sling destined to pierce the 
helmet of the giant of rebellion. 

It was Kansas that cast the first stone at slavery, an act later made 
general by presidential proclamation. Wherever Kansas troops 
marched, from the first raid of Colonel Anthony, the shackels fell from 
the slaves. 

The extraneous assistance of "money and brains furnished by Mas- 
sachusetts," so widely, but erroneously credited with all these ac- 
complished results, served only as a counter irritant, provoking the enemy 
to that species of madness, which in the divine order leads to merited de- 
struction. 

The philanthropic East, tremulous with sympathy for the threatened 
eause of freedom in Kansas, was the benignant angel that troubled the 
waters, from whose swirling depths arose the nascent state regenerated, 
enlightened and invigorated, yet pliant to the guidance of the Divine Im- 
manence, that is ever impelling thinking humanity, often by ways tor- 
tuous and reverse, and that they know not, towards a higher and nobler 
plane of being. 

This incomplete sketch, though in the main impressionistic, conforms 
in all its essential lines to the real, in its details rigidly to the truth as 
may be verified by examination, and in coloring, subdued rather than ex- 
aggerated, fading in the lapse of time; and freely invites criticism as a 
faithful presentation of the dramatic period of Kansas history. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




